Redemption Song: The Definitive Biography of Joe Strummer. Chris Salewicz

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СКАЧАТЬ of his own, after McLaren had turned down his request for a half-share in the Pistols. So the pair arranged a more thorough meeting with Bernie Rhodes, telling him of their plans to form a group called London SS. ‘Bernie made us go up to the Bull and Bush pub in Shepherds Bush to meet him, which was unbelievably rough and dangerous,’ remembered James. ‘As soon as he got there he slapped all this Nazi regalia on the table: “If you’re going to call yourself London SS, you’ll have to deal with this.” We hadn’t thought at all about the Nazi implications. It just seemed like a very anarchic, stylish thing to do,’ admitted James.

      Following their meeting with Rhodes, Mick Jones and Tony James placed an advertisement in Melody Maker: ‘Decadent 3rd generation rock and roll – image essential. New York Dolls style.’ Jones was still living in Highgate and it was the phone number of this address that was given in the advert. James lived in Twickenham, at the physically most distant end from Highgate of the 27 bus route: every day he would take the two-hour ride to Jones’s home, where they would both sit anxiously by the phone.

      Only half a dozen people replied – one was a singer from Manchester called Steven Morrisey, though nothing came of this. Jones and James were extremely taken with the very first response: Brian James, a guitarist with Belgian group Bastard. As the duo deemed necessary, he was stick-insect thin; after meeting the pair, Brian James went back to Brussels to quit his group.

      Beneath a café in Praed Street, Paddington, Bernard Rhodes found the London SS a rehearsal room. ‘When we started working with Bernie, he changed our lives,’ said James. ‘Up to then we were the New York Dolls, and had never thought of writing more than “Personality Crisis”. I remember sitting in the café upstairs with Bernie and saying I had an idea for a song about selling rockets in Selfridges. He liked it. But he was thinking of nuclear rockets and I was only thinking of fireworks. He said, “You’re not going to be able to do anything unless you give me a statement of intent.” It was artspeak. He’d give us reading lists: Proust, books on modern art – it was a great education. He also used to pull a sort of class thing: are you street, or are you middle-class? It didn’t seem very honest, as he was patently obviously middle-class himself.’

      Through the door of the rehearsal studio wafted various future members of the cast of punk. One Paul Simonon turned up by accident, and was auditioned for the job of singer: as a perfect David Bowie lookalike he sang Radio One, Radio One, over Jonathan Richman’s ‘Roadrunner’ song, for ten minutes until he was requested to stop. Both Terry Chimes and Nicky ‘Topper’ Headon auditioned as drummers, Headon being offered the job although leaving after a week. ‘I remember the audition was in some tiny little basement studio,’ he told me. ‘I got the gig, but I’d already done an audition for a soul band, and that was fifty quid a week, so I went on the road with them. London SS was very loud rock’n’roll. It was a bad punk group, really. Although the fact that Generation X, the Clash and the Damned came out of it shows there was something there, it wasn’t really very good.’ Having given up the hunt for a singer, London SS started rehearsing with Mick Jones on vocals and a drummer called Roland Hot. Over Christmas of 1975 Brian James left and formed the Damned with other McLaren luminaries Rat Scabies, Dave Vanian and Captain Sensible, leaving the London SS back at square one for Mick Jones and Tony James – although the Sex Pistols had unsuccessfully attempted to contact Jones to offer him the role of second guitarist.

      On 18 November 1975 Joe Strummer saw the first of two London shows at the Hammersmith Odeon by Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen, who had never played in London before, was promoting his Born to Run album, his third LP, a landmark record, which saw him touted as ‘the future of rock’n’roll’. ‘When Strummer went to see Springsteen his head was turned,’ said Clive Timperley. ‘The whole idea of Springsteen doing full-on three-hour concerts. Strummer thought, “That’s the way to do it!”’ The fact that Springsteen played a Telecaster was significant for Joe, who saw it as a sign. Joe even bought an excessively long guitar lead, allowing him to wander at will about the stage and even into the audience – just like Springsteen. Clive Timperley recalled that Joe Strummer’s performing histrionics became even more exaggerated; at one gig the guitarist noticed as he launched into a lengthy solo that Joe had disappeared offstage and was lying on an old mattress in the wings; as the moment came for his microphone cue, he sprang up and – as though shot from a cannon – hurtled across the stage, bursting into his vocal lines with perfect split-second timing. Springsteen-like, the 101’ers’ sets got longer: they would often play almost thirty songs, onstage for over ninety minutes, at a time when established high-energy acts like Steve Marriott’s Humble Pie were getting away with thirty-five minutes, including encore.

      Joe Strummer’s invigorated stage performance was not all he took from that much-hyped Hammersmith Odeon Springsteen concert. Born to Run, a unique and hugely influential album, was a record that combined an epic rock’n’roll feel with songs that were stories of ‘street life’ in Springsteen’s highly mythologized home town of Asbury Park in New Jersey. The Clash’s similar mythologizing of Notting Hill could be seen as coming partially from here, as well as from the references to Kingston, Jamaica, and specifically Trenchtown, in reggae records, notably those by the newly elected king of the genre, Bob Marley. ‘I was actually turned onto playing reggae by Mole, who was the bass player for the 101’ers, who finally made me really listen to Big Youth and feel it and I sort of saw the light,’ Joe told me. ‘I found it quite hard to step from R’n’B into that deep reggae style. But once it was under your skin it became almost a passion.’ So stirred was Joe by these profound Jamaican rhythms that, on a trip to Warlingham to see his mother and father, he found he couldn’t get the ‘Chh-chh’ sound of the high-hat out of his mind. ‘I went back to London and said, “Give me that record and put it on again.” That’s when we first tried to play reggae, was very early in the 101’ers.’ Although at the Charlie Pigdog Club Mole would occasionally sing a version of ‘Israelites’, the Desmond Dekker classic, Joe recalled the group’s reggae efforts were largely restricted to rehearsals.

      As well as the Springsteen dates, there had been another significant show in the London rock’n’roll calendar that November in 1975. On the sixth of the month the Sex Pistols had played their first ever gig at St Martin’s School of Art. Five songs into the set the plug was pulled; among the numbers was a cover of the Small Faces’ ‘Whatcha Gonna Do About It’ in which the singer Johnny Rotten swapped the word ‘hate’ for ‘love’ in the line ‘I want you to know that I love you’. The next day they played at Joe’s alma mater, Central School of Art and Design in Holborn. They got through a thirty-minute set.

      The vice-social secretary at Central was Sebastian Conran, son of design guru Terence Conran, who had given him the lease of a substantial house in Albany Street, next to Regent’s Park. One of those he rented rooms to was the new girlfriend of Mickey Foote. ‘As Mickey Foote was a friend of Joe’s,’ Sebastian told me, ‘we had the 101’ers come and play at one of our parties. It was good – I was really into the 101’ers. That was when I first met Joe.’ When the 101’ers played a Christmas concert at Central on 17 December, booked by Sebastian Conran in his capacity as Vice-Social Secretary, he also designed a poster for the show.

      Towards the end of 1975, however, Joe Strummer had begun to question the position of Mole within the 101’ers. Dan Kelleher, a guitarist friend of Clive Timperley, had guested with the group since the summer, until on 7 October, when the group played at the Nashville Rooms, he joined the 101’ers as a full member, another guitarist. ‘Once, late at night,’ said Jill Calvert, ‘Joe showed me a drawing he’d done of Mole. Then he said, “I’m gonna sack him.” He was asking, “Is it OK to sack Mole?” I wish I had said, “No, it isn’t. You shouldn’t.” There was a weakness in Joe – and I do regard it as a weakness – that he was pressured by the idea that “Dan can play every Beatles song.” Mole was actually much more musical than Dan, much more inventive: he was totally into reggae. The thing is, he was bald, and he was not pretty. So Joe was saying, “Well, Dan can stand on stage and look like Paul McCartney, and sound like Paul McCartney, and he can hold it all together. Mole СКАЧАТЬ